Hacker News Reader

Comment by azemetre | Hacker News Reader

Is there even a consensus that love languages are a valid concept? I ask because it's hard to see how falsifiable the idea is, reading about love languages seems highly "westernized" when love is a universal feeling not bound by culture.

How do love languages apply to women in Saudi Arabia or Papua New Guinea? What about subsistence farming communities in Africa? What about native tribes in Brazil or Colombia?

IDK, love languages seem like any other pop psychology fad like Myers–Briggs or whatever came before it then promptly forgotten.

View on HN

It's generally used as a starting point for discussing relationship needs. I put this under the flawed but useful category. Although it's really just another way to label yourself to others.

I don't see it as harmful but I'm sure we'll see more about it in the future as it has grown in popularity. Every woman in their 20s/30s I talk to has at one time mentioned it to me which was not the case until about 2 years ago.

I'm sure different cultures will have different ways of expressing affection thus leading to a different set of "Love Languages".

The term "validity" is thrown around a lot but there's no universal measure of psychometric validity. In simple terms, something is valid if it's predictive of something else that is useful (usually a behavior or another construct). There's plenty of studies that investigate the validity of love languages around things like marital satisfaction etc. More importantly, for the purposes of this study which is just based around self-reported preferences (and not psychometric properties), validity doesn't really matter. Reliability does, and there are is plenty of research around the reliability of these scales.

Personally I find it to be a useful model. It's not going to perfectly describe every relationship accurately. But I find it gives me an opportunity to be introspective about a relationship and my contributions to it, including my shortcomings.

Not everything needs to be scientifically rigorous to make a positive impact. Though I agree it's useful to keep in mind the limitations of a given description. MBTI is neat but making it part of a job application feels like a step too far.

Human behavior is flavored in the context of culture.

A western interpretation of love and the associated descriptions probably doesn’t apply to other cultures.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com